Positron emission tomography is used in particular to answer diagnostic questions concerning the function of organs, with the main focus being on metabolic processes. For this purpose, the distribution of a radioactive marker substance in the body of a subject being examined is determined.
Compared to other diagnostic methods, positron emission tomography has a somewhat poor time resolution, so that natural movement processes in the body of a subject being examined, for example peristalsis, respiration or heart beat, take place with time constants which are considerably shorter than the measurement times on which the positron emission tomography is based. This has the effect that the positron emission measurement information appears as spatially blurred points in a presented view, so that exact attribution to an anatomical feature of the examined subject is possible only with very great difficulty, if indeed at all. The informativeness of positron emission measurement in terms of structural and anatomical features is therefore limited.